Rally Fusion Race Of Champions [Xbox Classic]

Rally Fusion: Race of Champions is a racing game that lets you compete in the Race of Champions and the Nations Cup.The Race of Champions is a single event where you race head to head with identical cars on parallel courses. The Nations cup is an off-road cup where up to eight teams race it out in a knock-out competition. Each mode can be raced in three difficulty levels of which the harder two must be unlocked first by finishing the easier class. Each difficulty comes with different cars and adjustments to the tracks. Besides these two main modes the game also comes with: duel, rally, circuit, rally cross, driving, hill climb, elimination and follow-the-leader game modes. Tracks from all over the world are included as well as 30 professional world-class drivers from the featured events.

Rally Fusion Race of Champions [Xbox Classic]

Activision will be trying its hand at the rally racing genre this year with its upcoming multiplatform release Rally Fusion. Developed by UK developer Climax Brighton, the game attempts to blend elements from technical rally racers such as the Colin McCrae games and elements from mainstream arcade-style racers. We recently had a chance to check out a build of the Xbox version of the game and were pretty pleased by what we saw.

While it will have slightly better graphics, the Xbox version of Rally Fusion will feature the same content as the PlayStation 2 version. You'll find three main modes to test your driving skills--race of champions, challenge, and quick race--each with its own unique array of gameplay types to choose from. The race of champions mode will challenge you to win two competitions: champion of champions and the nation's cup. Both of these competitions will feature intermediate, advanced, and professional levels of difficulty. The challenge mode presents you with a series of competitions that are separated into three levels of difficulty: class C, class B, and class A. As you make your way through the competitions, you'll end up playing through 10 challenges in total. The final game mode, quick race, is a bit different from the quick race options found in similar racing games. The quick race mode will feature 11 challenges that you can unlock, and while you'll still be able to hop into a race with just a few button presses, the mode will also let you unlock more cars and tracks.

Activision will be trying its hand at the rally racing genre this year with its upcoming multiplatform release Rally Fusion. Developed by UK developer Climax Brighton, the game attempts to blend elements from technical rally racers such as the Colin McCrae games and elements from mainstream arcade-style racers. We recently had a chance to check out an updated build of the PlayStation 2 version of the game and were pleased by what we saw.

Rally Fusion will feature three main gameplay modes--race of champions, challenge, and quick race--each with its own unique array of gameplay types to choose from. The race of champions mode will challenge you to win two competitions: champion of champions and the nation's cup. Both of these competitions will feature intermediate, advanced, and professional levels of difficulty. The challenge mode presents you with a series of competitions that are separated into three levels of difficulty: class C, class B, and class A. As you make your way through the competitions, you'll end up playing through 10 challenges in total. The final game mode, quick race, is a bit different from the quick race options found in similar racing games. The quick race mode will feature 11 challenges that you can unlock, and while you'll still be able to hop into a race with just a few button presses, the mode will also let you unlock more cars and tracks.

The game draws its inspiration by The Race of Champions Rally Masters, a series of competitions that was initially held in 1988 as a test of driver skill. The race itself involved two drivers racing against each other on a unique parallel course of the same length and design, while using the exact same car. The idea was to isolate any advantages that a car or section of a track can give someone in a typical rally race, in an attempt to place the outcome of these events squarely on the shoulders of the driver's abilities. Since that time, The Race of Champions has expanded to include the Nations Cup event, which is a lengthy elimination process that filters down prospective entrants to The Race of Champions finals over the course of a weekend. All these elimination races, as well as the final event itself, are held at the Gran Canaria racetrack, a short obstacle course that features two identical parallel tracks side-by-side. The primary focus of Rally Fusion is on these Gran Canaria elimination events, though to keep the game from getting overly monotonous, there are nearly ten other rally modes available that take place throughout eight different road- and circuit races. As you'll quickly come to find out, however, these additions only serve to confuse you.

Upon starting the game, you'll be prompted with a simple interface that, for what it's worth, lacks the visual flare of similar games like V-Rally 3 or Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. From here, you're able to select one of three primary game modes (a fourth can be unlocked at a later time): Race of Champions mode, Race of Champions challenge mode, and a quick race mode. There's the option of accessing either the Nations Cup race or the Race of Champions finals from the Race of Champions mode, though you can also get to a similar Race of Champions event from the quick race menu or the Race of Champions challenge mode. Confused yet? Hold on. The quick race and Race of Champions challenge modes both have additional overlapping events, including rally, circuit, and rally cross races, as well as hill climbs and an elimination event that's similar to Need for Speed's knockout races. What's more, the Race of Champions finals in any of these three primary modes of play are all nearly identical, and all painfully repetitive. They're all held at the Gran Canaria track, and while it's a fun course that includes a couple of jumps and corners that require a good deal of powersliding, it's incredibly short, and you'll be forced to race on it six or seven times before you're crowned the winner, at which point, you'll move up to a new competition class only to race on this same course all over again.

To be fair, Rally Fusion does include 19 licensed rally cars from manufacturers like Ford, Toyota, and Peugeot, all of which handle in a completely unique fashion. The Toyota Rav-4, for example, is top heavy, and requires a lot of input to keep pointed in the right direction. The nimble ROC buggy, on the other hand, can fly over jumps and breeze through corners with ease. These differences in handling do extend the life of the Race of Champions finals, so to speak, but the real value of Rally Fusion lies in its challenge and quick race events. It's here that you can do everything from a head-to-head race with another rally car in a point-to-point race, to racing against a full field of seven other drivers on one of several outdoor tracks. There's also a hill climb event that's reminiscent of RalliSport Challenge's hill races, and a follow the leader event that depletes the "health" of any car that isn't at the head of the pack. And while there's no dedicated multiplayer mode in the game, many of the events in the quick race and challenge events will let you race with or against three other people. Additionally, the cars themselves do take damage, and this damage affects their handling drastically. Slamming into a tree or mistiming a jump can cause you to break an axle or lose a bumper, forcing you to hobble across the finish line. Like many driving games lately, this damage is reflected accurately on your car's model, and even though a color-coded damage indicator exists on the screen, you can make out the state of your vehicle just by looking at it.

In fact, it's the game's graphics that are its strong suit, not the selection of quick race and championship modes. Rally Fusion looks great, though not as phenomenal as Rallisport Challenge. It's bright and colorful and makes use of some very impressive lighting and reflection effects. This is especially true of the snowy or rain-soaked tracks that you'll come across, where brake lights can be seen reflected off icy surfaces. Additionally, you'll notice that your car will get progressively dirty as you make your way through a given race, and beautifully rendered weather effects like rain, snow, or fog will often hinder your vision. What's more, there aren't any instances of slowdown in Rally Fusion, even in the rally cross events when several other cars are displayed onscreen at once. Interestingly enough, there are twice as many cars onscreen in the Xbox version than there are in Rally Fusion for the PS2. The sound in the game is particularly good, especially the engine noises, which are unique to each car and change in intensity and volume as you switch between the game's one first-person perspective and two third-person perspectives. What's more, the game supports surround sound, and this complements the already great sound effects very nicely. Most of the game's music, on the other hand, is composed of a weird mix of guitar rock, country, and techno, and it's all largely forgettable. 041b061a72